Are you ready for a “break-the-rules” “think outside the bun” way to jazz up your Christmas light photography? Denver Corporate and Portrait Photographer sharing an off-the-wall and cool way to deviate from the traditional lighting techniques described in Tips & Tricks #2 and Tips & Tricks #3.
Obviously only white lights were on this tree giving the image a clean, crisp feel.
Don’t bother packing the tripod for this gig, we’re going wild and free, using a longer shutter speed and blurring these photographs ON PURPOSE. Artsy fartsy. Subjects were a well-lit Christmas tree and a porch railing with lots of lights draped over it.
All of these photographs were taken at a shutter speed of 1.3 seconds. That’s right a one and one-third second exposure with an f/stop of 5.6. The camera was taken off of the automatic settings and left in the manual mode.
The background isn't as dark because a nearby porch light added to the illumination.
After focusing on the nearest lights the real fun and experimenting begins. The idea is to move the camera around during the exposure. Either push the shutter release and then move the camera or start the movement and press the shutter. Try both, shoot a lot, adjust your exposure as needed based on the first few shots.
This is one of my favorites, reminding me of sheet music.
A big sweeping camera motion will produce longer bands of color. Quick choppy motions the opposite. Try forming letters or numbers or short words moving the camera as though it were a pencil writing in thin air.
